Opinions: Say what?

 published on Monday, March 24, 2008

Every Sunday morning, NBC News wants us to "Meet the Press."

Well, we have an issue with that: What if we don't want to meet them? What if we think they're biased in the worst way and unable to keep the necessary amount of journalistic integrity about them that their significant job demands?

Yesterday's program did a lot to make us think twice about taking NBC up on its press-meeting suggestion — mainly because of its own political director, Chuck Todd.

As the cameras rolled on the "Meet the Press" Easter edition, Todd was found opposite Tim Russert discussing John McCain's questionable comments from last week in which he incorrectly linked al-Qaida and Iran. Disappointingly, this discussion was not preceded by an Easter egg hunt.

When Russert asked about whether McCain's dubious connection of the Sunni al-Qaida organization to the Shiite Iranian government would hurt the Arizona senator's candidacy, Todd — again, we must mention that he is the political director of NBC News, self-proclaimed "America's News Leader" — gave an equally dubious answer.

In response to Russert's question, Todd said, "Because of the age issue, he can't ever look like he's having a senior moment ... OK, so he misspoke. Even if he gets dinged on the experience stuff — 'Oh, he says he's Mr. Experience. Doesn't he know the difference between this stuff?' — he's got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it. I mean, the irony to this is that had either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama misspoke like that, it'd have been on a running loop, and it would become a big problem for a couple of days for them."

What does that even mean? Well, in terms of the media's should-be lack of partisanship, definitely nothing good. After all, to recap, the political director of the top-rated NBC News organization — did we mention that part already? — said that because McCain has enough in the bank with the media in terms of his "experience," he gets a free pass on his very false assertion. However, as Todd also stated, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would not have gotten away with such a slip.

How many standards do you see here coming out of NBC News on this issue? We're seeing double — much like when Obama spent all of last week getting blasted for his preacher's anti-American remarks and McCain dealt with none in light of the strong anti-Islamic comments of his personal "spiritual guide."

What's truly sad here is that, if this Todd statement holds true, the old habits of the media will be playing their usual part in the upcoming election season — their pick-and-choose style of political coverage can only stand to further polarize the electorate.

And that sucks. So just remember that although it was just some dude on some Sunday morning show geared mostly at older folks talking about an old dude making mistakes, there's a valuable life lesson to put into effect: Complain, complain and complain some more. If enough viewers gripe, eventually they'll have to enact a shift in their coverage.

Until then, we just hope that we have enough patience in the bank with the media so that we can get away with waiting for some change.